Part 1 – A Camp My way Adventure
“I Can’t Relax. I find vacations problematic” – John Oliver
While I used to admire John Oliver for his wit, I have found myself waining with tolerance towards him with his politics over the last few years. But the above quote whether rightly or wrongly attributed is something I can relate to. Like so many city folk and more importantly entrepreneurs, it is always hard to truly relax. I almost never go on purely vacation vacations. I always find a way to spin business into it. Perhaps it’s just my nature but doing nothing to me is very problematic. Though time is relative, our existence as we know it on this planet in a time perspective that we can understand we have so little time to achieve anything great. So many strive to create legacies only to run out of time in their own lives. To me often, time is the enemy and that along with my need to sleep or nap it is a constant battle to overcome and achieve all that I need to get done.
And so it began, the quest to relax, the beginning.
We (Sam Glennie aka John Sambo) were told to arrive at the famous Scandinave spa in Whistler, BC. To what I wasn’t entirely sure but as it turned out the spa supports camp my way and donated time for all the camp my way participants. The time for arrival was mentioned in an email but other than that we weren’t quite sure what we were supposed to do. Were we suppose to wait for everyone? would there be the standard icebreakers? We waited for a bit and then decided to ask the front desk.
To our surprise, they told us we just have to check in and then they preceded to hand us towels. Apparently, all we were supposed to do was enjoy the spa and relax. I have to be honest, I’m not really a spa person. At first, it was very uncomfortable for us both as we really weren’t sure what to do. I am a person that is always on the go or at the very least doing something stimulating whether I have Netflix on in the background, or I am playing a video game, to writing blog posts, to business strategy, to marketing plans for UTKM, to Planning curriculum, to teaching, to working a part-time job, to training. Always doing, and always on time or trying to be as I juggle everything I have to do in a given week.
Yet here we were trying to hit pause on the hectic lives we left while dripping in sweat in the saunas, or steam rooms, or sitting in quiett slowly pruning away in various warm pools of water they keep at various temperatures. Part of the spa experience also included jumping into pools of glacial cold water. Neither of us found this part particularly relaxing but it’s good for you evidently.
Despite what we knew we were supposed to be doing, relaxing, we were still really out of place. In addition, they have a no talking policy on most of the grounds, something both Sam and I struggle to do for various reasons. Why should we be uncomfortable though, people from all over the world pay a lot of money to come to this spa? Yet, trying to be relaxed and calm was a struggle. We only lasted about 1.5 hours even though we had far more than that. We finally stepped out, got changed, and went for a snack.
Finally, Terrance and crew arrived. He wondered why we weren’t in the spa. Acknowledging we had a hard time relaxing, we sat down for a chat and briefly met some of the people on the trip. We were told to meet at Nesters Whistler at 5:30. So we decided to find the outdoor store for some last minute supplies. Then to the bar. Why the bar? well, I knew many of the people on the camp were recovering addicts so it would be reasonable to assume that camp my way was a dry camp. So time for one last beer for the week. The two others we met earlier had the same idea, clearly, they were not there as recovering addicts. What could they be there for then? The answer when asked was
“you will have to find out, we can’t give away everything all at once.”
5:30 hit, and Nesters market we were at. Some more last minute shopping and meeting with some of the other camp participants. 3 individuals who had for various lengths of time checked in with a program called Together we Can, An addiction Recover and education centre. There was also a Czech woman who as it turned out was a massage therapist who was donating her time to the camp. This was something that sounded great, camping and a massage therapist? Awesome. We ended up chatting with everyone as we waited for some of the last members of the camp to arrive. Two individuals from Germany who had met Terrance when he was there to bring awareness to PTSD.
Once they arrived we left in a caravan which immediately reminded me of the army as we followed Terrance to his house near the lakeside to which we would be camping at. I couldn’t understand why he simply wouldn’t tell us how to get there on our own, with an address or GPS coordinates. It didn’t make sense to me until as dusk set upon us we arrived through a small native town to a poorly marked dirt road. As it turns out this dirt road led to an hour or so drive on more dirt roads and switchbacks through the mountainside to an even smaller town to where Terrance resided. Not shortly after we started it was dark and we had to carefully navigate these roads all while trying not to lose the car in front. I later found out that there was another road to the town but this was the “shorter” route and thus to expedite the trip we took this one. I was thankful that my recently purchased truck was not in vain and I got to test its off-road capabilities. I was very satisfied if you must know and strongly recommend Tacoma’s for your off road needs.
Arrival at last. By now dusk had long since passed. There was not much else to do other than to mingle and stake a claim for sleeping places. Though as is common with all new groups there is always an air of reluctance to mingle outside the initial contact groups. For the most part, everyone stuck to their travel groups. We eventually all found a spot to pitch our tents on Terrance’s property to set up tents except the Germans who took advantage of his guest bedrooms.
Tomorrow the adventure would begin.
Part 3: A Land before time – Day 2 – Back to Nature
Please help Camp My Way become the program I know it can be and DONATE TODAY!